Multilingualism in India, by Debi Prasanna Pattanayak (Ed.). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 1990. xii + 116 pp.

Abstract

Issues in Applied Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 Multilingualism in India edited by Debi Prasanna Pattanayak. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 1990. xii +116 pp. Reviewed by Antony John Kunnan The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor The choice of language and which it is put is central to a people's definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire the use to universe. Ngugi Wa Thiong'o Mind Decolonizing the (1986, p. 4) Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, characterized in glowing terms India's numerous languages and cultures as unity in diversity, he was surely speaking in his India's first When colonial elitist Nehru was using voice, both literally as well as figuratively. Literally, his Oxford accent and register (as he did in his Independence Day Speech on August 15, 1947, India's Tryst with Destiny ), acquired as a student of law at that famed university. Figuratively, he was hoping that the colonial ideology of patriotism, which he had also acquired in England, coupled with his own grandstand view of post-colonial Indian history, would carry the country through its immediate trauma. His view of a national culture, the unity of India, despite its 200-odd languages and cultures, its was a gross simplification for the sake of political unity in attempt to displace in the Indian psyche a pluralistic space bounded by different languages and cultures. Nevertheless, this imperialist representation served him well because it aimed to bring together a newly independent country which was, in Nandy's (1989) words, not blessed with an authoritative cultural center (p. 3) but with mind-boggling amorphousness and diversity (p. 4). Pattanayak's introduction to his edited volume, Multilingualism in India, in contrast, argues that multilingualism is an asset, for the national culture that emerges from such a condition would have an equilibrium [that] holds societies together (p. viii). His rambling though passionate introduction sets the tone for the volume, especially his anger at the subtle monolingual coloniaUsm,